


auribus teneo lupum

by jeweleeah



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Remembers, F/M, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Sparring, but only sometimes, infinity war? never heard of it, kind of as a metaphor for sex if you squint, probably incorrect russian, semi-gratuitous mentions of tony considering he never speaks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 02:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15063212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeweleeah/pseuds/jeweleeah
Summary: She's never told anybody, not even Clint.They've talked a bit, about her time as КГБ, about her time in the Red Room, but never in detail. Some stories are best left untold.She's certainly never mentionedBuckyJamesЯшаthe Winter Soldier.He would believe her, sure - it's not like she jokes about her time in the Red Room a lot, or ever.But she never brought it up, and never would, after D.C.





	auribus teneo lupum

**Author's Note:**

> this started as like 5 lines on my phone and then just took the wheel from me from there. 
> 
> this is my little love note to bucky and nat and bucky/nat.
> 
> note about timelines: so mcu has natasha being born in '84, but considering that Bucky was ~26 when he fell off the train, and was physically probably at least 30 by the time he goes to the Red Room when you consider the amount of time he probably spent in/out of cyrofreeze between the 40's and then, I wasn't going to make Natasha a teenager because that'd be creepy. Does her being in the Red Room in the early 2000's make sense - historically or canonically? no. but it's better than her being like 16 and sleeping with an adult. so if that bothers you, sorry. 
> 
> translations for Russian are in the end-notes.

She's never told anybody, not even Clint.

They've talked a bit, about her time as КГБ, about her time in the Red Room, but never in detail. Some stories are best left untold. 

She's certainly never mentioned  ~~Bucky~~ ~~James~~   ~~Яша~~ the Winter Soldier. 

He would believe her, sure - it's not like she jokes about her time in the Red Room a lot, or ever. 

But she never brought it up, and never would, after D.C.

*

Steve loves James, so much so it's become something physical about him. As obvious as the green flecks in his eyes, or the brown littered through his hair, or the way he sometimes holds his side when he isn't actually winded - like he's still bracing for an oncoming asthma attack. 

None of these are something you immediately notice about Steve, but they are there, clear as day, if you're looking for them. 

So it's the same, the way Steve loves him. It's in the way he says his name - always 'Bucky' or 'Buck' or 'Barnes', like James is  _his_ , as if Steve has christened him anew with the name he gave him - it's in the way Steve's eyes track him across a room, in the way he would topple governments and fight God himself if it meant a chance to save him, from whatever dares to try and take James away. 

Steve is the best person Natasha knows - stubborn to a fault and infuriatingly single-minded, sure, but even after all the shit he's been through, after the world he's saved countless times has tried to keep him down and control him - he still has things he believes in, he still believes in  _good_. 

So she's never said anything. 

*

Natasha has tried to keep her distance from James. Never obviously so - she would never want him to think that she holds something against him, doesn't want him to feel unsafe or unwelcome. She knows how hard it can be, trying to build a life in a world you spent so long tearing apart. 

But she's never sought him out, only smiles politely at him in the elevator, or when they both have ended up in the common kitchen late at night, unable to sleep, terrified to sleep, terrified to confront whatever they know is waiting for them behind closed eyes. 

She doesn't know the specifics, doesn't  _want_ to, but she would wager a guess that his time in the Red Room may have been some of his best - or well, least traumatic - of his time as the Winter Soldier. 

The memories are slightly faded now, like photographs a bit off color from sitting in the sun too long - hyper-specific detail lost to time, and grief, and that pesky thing of having to be un-brainwashed. 

He'd been there to train them, to weed out the weak, to prepare them for the life demanded of them. He'd been their mentor, their leader, a figure cloaked in shadow and lakes and lakes of blood. But he'd been in charge, unsupervised (as unsupervised as you could be, there), and he'd been allowed just slightly off of his chain. He'd been allowed to be a person, not just a weapon. 

His hair had been shorter then, but his eyes harder than they are now. 

She had loved him. She had loved him the way you only can when you are surrounded by people who would gut you like a fish in public as easily as they'd shoot you in the back, when you were broken and remade in a place lovingly nicknamed not after the color on the walls, or the colors of the flag, but because of the blood spilt there. 

It had only been a year, maybe less. Only a year, but it had been intense, and bloody, and horrifically intimate. 

Then he had been taken away, or maybe he just left - there in her bed one night, and gone the next morning. She'd been whisked out of the Red Room and unleashed upon the world shortly after. 

And years later, on a cliff-side in Eastern Europe, he had shot her clean through the gut, like they had never met. 

She understands, now, of course, that to him, to that version of him, they probably never had. 

It had hurt, all the same. 

*

She never considered, never even planned for the possibility, that one day, he might remember her. 

She certainly never expected for it to happen while in the tower common area - hair still wet from a shower, sporting fresh stitches in her face and a brace on her wrist. 

Though, in retrospect, bare faced and bleeding would be how he would remember her most often. 

James, turning away from Steve after some small crack he'd made at Tony's expense, catches her eye, and the laughter dies in his throat. He sits frozen solid in his seat, staring at her,  _into_ her. 

Natasha can barely breathe. 

The common room around them slowly falls quiet, until their teammates are staring at their staring. 

Tony clears his throat, as if he's about to break the unsettling silence, but James bolts out of his seat and towards the elevators, before he can speak.

Steve follows him. Of course he does. 

The group waits till the elevator shuts, their eyes all on Natasha. 

"'Tasha, what was that about?"

She hates lying to Clint. 

*

Steve corners her in the kitchen - politely, but still he corners her, that same night. 

"Can I ask you something?"

"Just did." 

It's an easy response, just this side of friendly - it feels cowardly. 

"Do you know what was up with Bucky this afternoon?"

"You'll have to ask him." 

"That's the thing - I did, repeatedly. He just kept telling me it was nothing, but that wasn't nothing." 

She shrugs, small, guiltless - she hopes. 

She doesn't much like lying to Steve, either. 

*

A week or so later, she's sitting (not sulking - sitting) in the kitchen late at night - or very early in the morning, by most standards. Even Tony had already gone to bed. 

She hears him coming before she sees him. 

James is obviously trying to make his presence known, to not creep silently into the room, like people occasionally have given him shit for doing. 

He walks past her, pours himself a glass of orange juice, and turns to face her, back against the kitchen counter. 

(Right by the knives, with at least three different possible means of immediate exit, and a clear view of the room - an instinct she knows all too well.)

He's wearing a too-large sleep shirt (Steve's? She's not sure) and plaid pajama bottoms, slung loosely around his waist. He looks good, healthy, if a little on the tired side. His hair is pulled half up, and his jaw set. 

"I know you."

She raises an eyebrow. 

"How do you mean?"

God, does she feel like a coward. 

His metal arm shifts, tightens every so slightly against the counter, whirring almost silently in the still, early morning air. 

"You know what I mean. I know you, I remember you, from Красный Комната- from the Red Room. I trained you, I... called you Natashka. You called me-" he trails off, like the memories aren't quite there. 

"Яша, we called you Yasha." 

The metal arm tightens, and the counter gives a sad little groan. James lifts his arm, surprised, and switches the glass to his left hand. He stares at her. 

Natasha is determined to meet his gaze, but her heart is pounding away in her chest. She's certain he can hear it from where he stands. 

"Why didn't you tell me? Or Steve? Or somebody?"

Her eyes fall to the counter. 

"And say what, exactly, James? Hey Steve, I was sleeping with your best friend when we were both brainwashed Russian assassins. Funny how things like that happen, right?"

The response is glib, beneath the seriousness of the conversation. She sounds like she's turning into Tony. She suppresses a shudder at the thought.

James raises his eyebrows, and the glass shatters in his hand. 

"Shit- I," he takes a steadying breath, glass at his feet, "We slept together?" 

Well, fuck. 

"Ah," is all she can manage. 

James' face drops, like he knows he's hurt her, as if it's his fault he can't remember her through the fog of years of mind-control and abuse. 

JARVIS' voice breaks their silence. 

"Ms. Romanoff and Mr. Barnes, if I might interject, I wish to notify you that Mr. Rogers is approaching in the elevator." 

Natasha is fond of JARVIS. 

She hops out of her seat and grabs a dust pan from under the counter, and sets to work cleaning up the glass scattered across the clean, white tile. 

James bends down, almost automatically, to help her. 

Steve strolls in half a minute later, looking tired but alert, dressed in running clothes. He stops by the island, surprise on his face at the sight of the two of them cleaning up glass at 5 in the morning. 

Steve opens the fridge, a small smile on his face. 

"Breaking shit this early in the mornin', Buck?"

Natasha laughs, light and airy. 

"No, it was me. I didn't hear James come in, and when he said hello I knocked my glass off of the counter. He's just kind enough to help clean it up."

That pulls a tired, raspy laugh out of Steve. 

"Oh yeah, ever the gentleman, Barnes - scare the dames half outta their wits, and then play the hero."

James rolls his eyes and smacks Steve on the calf from where he's crouched beside her. He doesn't smile. 

"Don't go exposing my master plan, Rogers, now I need'ta come up with a whole new one."

Natasha smiles, small and bitter. How could she have thought James would remember her fully when he couldn't even remember ~~his own name~~ what they had called him. She was foolish. 

She sweeps the last of the glass into the pan, and stands. 

"I'm going to head to bed before I break anything else, have a good morning, boys."

"Get some sleep, Nat!" Steve calls after her, but James says nothing. 

*

It's another three weeks before she sees him again. 

She ends up in Spain, for a while, following a lead on a HYDRA scientist trying his hand at recreating the Serum. He ends up dead in a river where he belongs. 

James, Steve, and Sam head out to France for similar work shortly after she comes back. 

If she avoids the kitchen, it's nobody's business but her own. 

She takes up haunting the gym, later at night. If she's training, she's not thinking. If she's not thinking, she's not remembering the look on James' face when she had told him. 

Maybe he seeks her out, maybe he's just looking to burn off steam, but shortly after they return from France, James' slinks into the training area at 2 am while Natasha is hurtling blades at three different targets. 

She doesn't hear him coming this time, and turns sharply as door closes behind him, to see him already half way across the room. 

She meets his eyes, briefly, and turns back towards her targets. 

He rummages through his weapons stash in the storage area, and joins her where she stands. 

He throws a blade at the farthest one, and hits it dead between the brows. A kill shot - what else. 

"I've been trying to remember - seems like that's all I do these days, and-"

"James, you don't have to-"

"No, I do. Not for you, or Steve, or whatever. I  _need_ to remember, you don't know what it's like, carrying two different half-remembered lives around in your head-"

Natasha's mouth turns up at the corners of it's own volition. 

"I do, a little, actually."

James glances sideways at her, but Natasha keeps her eyes ahead, and flings a blade at the target to her left. It connects where the small intestine would be - it wouldn't kill you immediately, but it sure is easier to get information out of a person when they've got a blade in their gut that you can twist. 

"I've been trying to remember, and I think I do. Most of it, at least." 

He throws a second blade at the same target as his first, right into the heart. That was one dead dummy. 

Natasha looks at him. 

"If you'd like, you can tell me what you remember, and I can fill in what you want me to."

Still looking at James, she flings a blade at the dummy on her sharp left, directly into it's throat. 

He stares at the dummy he's twice killed for a moment, before speaking. 

"I got sent to the Red Room to train some of you, this was probably, what? Late 90's? Still havin' trouble with timelines."

Natasha shakes her head. 

"Close. 2003."

He nods, like he's trying to rearrange something in his brain. 

"You were older than the rest of the girls, better than 'em, too. They hated you for it. First day I was there I watched you crack a girl's skull wide open while sparring."

Natasha winces. 

"Sorry - they had me train you one on one, sometimes, early in the morning before everybody else. You never watched your left flank properly."

Natasha smiles. 

"Learned that lesson when Iskra almost killed me while sparring."

"I remember that, too."

James inhales deeply, like he's bracing himself to say it. 

"We were training once, one on one, maybe a month or two in? You finally watched your flank for once, countered, and pinned me. We sat there like that for a moment, and then I kissed you."

Natasha shakes her head. 

"Oh?"

"I kissed you. Thought you might kill me, but you were the only man for miles, and I was young, and full of adrenaline, and stupid."

"And I didn't. Kill you, obviously."

"No, you flung me half way across the room and left."

It's James' turn to wince. 

"Wow."

Natasha shrugs and throws a blade, hitting right above where James lodged his first in the dummy's skull. 

"You avoided me like the plague, after that. You went extra hard on me during training, made me spar almost every other day, like you were waiting for somebody else to do the job for you. Then, probably two weeks later-"

"I ... pulled you aside during a meal, brought you into the hall, and kissed you."

Natasha nods. 

"I could barely believe what was happening. I thought for a second I was a test subject on some poisoning method they were trying out." 

James frowns. 

"... Don't remember much after that. We slept together, a lot, I think. You did this crazy flexible thing with your legs-"

Natasha laughs, loud, cracking the spell of blood-stained nostalgia that had settled around them. 

"Sorry if that was-"

"No, James, it's fine. It's not like it didn't happen," she grins, "Plus, it  _is_ pretty impressive."

"I don't remember how it ended."

"I had just graduated, and was training the younger girls while a cover was being prepared for me. They even gave me my own room. We fell asleep one night, and the next morning you weren't there. You didn't come back. I left shortly after. The Red Room was destroyed a year or two later." 

James nods, and throws a blade at the dummy Natasha had hit in the intestine. It lands in the bicep, a warning shot. 

He stares hard at the dummy he had just struck. 

"Were we- was it more than just sex?"

Ah. 

She considers lying. 

"It was for me. You were always hard to read. I don't think you even knew whether you could feel anything for me."

"I shot you."

"You shot somebody else through me."

"I remember it, but in the memory you're not- you were an obstacle. You weren't Natashka, you weren't even ex-KGB, you were just... in the way."

"It's better like that, I suppose."

They fall silent for several minutes, flinging knives with deadly accuracy, the only sounds in the room the quiet whirring of James' arm in harmony with the blades whizzing through the air - until James stops. 

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course, James."

"Did you know it was me? That I was me- that I was Bucky Barnes?"

Natasha shakes her head. 

"In Russia? No. I'd never even heard of you, until I read Steve's file after they found him. Even then, I didn't make the connection. Maybe I didn't want to - it's so unlikely, that my Yasha was his Bucky, was the Winter Soldier. An easy thought to avoid, if you're pretending to be rational. But when we saw you in D.C.? Yes - I knew."

"'n you never said anything?"

"No. How could I? It took him so long to get you back, and he fought so hard - and he loves you, James. It just seemed cruel."

"Nobody else knows? Clint?"

"Nobody else. I think Госпожа may have known, and that's why they pulled you away so suddenly - but she's long dead."

James nods. 

"And if I told Steve, one day?"

"It's not my story to tell - feel free to share what you'd like."

He looks over at her. 

"This is about you just as much as it's about me."

Natasha sets the blade that was ready to fly out of her hand, down. How do you explain the delicate and impossible disentangling of selves to somebody who still has to face such a task?

She sighs. 

"Look, James, whoever I was there, whoever they made me, I'm not that girl anymore. That's no longer me. I still have to own it, I still have to accept it as part of my past, I still need to atone - but here? Now? It's more like a terrible story to me, than it is a life I once lived. What you tell Steve is between you and him. He maybe understands better than anyone here not telling somebody you care about the truth in order to spare their feelings."

James nods, and throws his last blade. It lands above and to the left of where Natasha had pierced it's intestine. The liver. A quick death. 

He vaults over the table and collects both of their knives.

He moves the same as he used to - quick and graceful and sure, but there's something more playful in him, than there ever was in Yasha. It's strange to see, this living hybrid of a man who she loved, a man who didn't kill her because it wasn't worth the effort, and a man she barely knows. 

He brings the blades back over, and sets them down. 

"I have a dumb idea," he says. 

"Oh?"

"We should spar." 

"Jesus, that is a dumb idea. I see where Steve gets it from."

"I'll have you know I get most of my stupid from Steve, not the other way around. C'mon, you spar with most everybody else on the team." He's grinning at her, tempting and hopeful - it's not a look she's ever seen on him, before. 

"Are you sure it's a good idea? I don't want to accidentally trigger something in your brain, or-"

"Nuh-uh, doll-face, not a valid excuse anymore. The Wakandan Princess got me all sorted," he raps his knuckles against his temple, as if that proves his point. 

She laughs. Who knew she was so easy to win over?

"Fine! You know what, fine. But because you called me doll-face, I'm gonna kick your ass." 

"What? Don't like doll-face? What about заяц?котёнок? Think I remember calling you those, once or twice." 

She likes to think she doesn't blush. 

She toes off her shoes, and he takes off his shirt, and she reminds herself not to stare. 

He looks different than he did. He was all tight muscle and definition, in Russia. When they'd seen him in D.C., he was paler than he had been, and looked gaunt in the face, like all that muscle was hiding a deep hunger. He's bigger now, stronger, too. Amazing, what not being fed through a drip and kept on ice, will do for a body.

He looks good. 

"What are we doing, exactly?" She asks, "No weapons, first one to pin, wins?" 

"Old school, I like it," he says, "Oh, wait-" and bends down to remove a knife he had holstered to his ankle. 

"Do you  _sleep_ like that?" 

He looks a little embarrassed. 

"Where do you keep your weapons when you sleep?"

"Behind my headboard, under the bed, and in the side-table, like a human." She remembers, as she says this, that she has a blade hidden at her thigh at the moment, but now she feels too much like a hypocrite to remove it. 

They both move to the painted ring in the center of the training area. 

"On three," he says. 

They count together, and on three they both step into the circle. 

They move, slowly, around the circle. Watching one another, waiting for the other to make the first move. 

Natasha is the first to step inwards, and James mirrors her. She considers charging at him, sweeping his legs, but before she can, he dives at her. She ducks, and grabs at his left leg. He counters once he lands, dragging his leg back towards him, and trying to trap her with his free one. She releases his leg, throws her free elbow to his gut, rolls away, and stands up, backing away, fists up, grinning hard. He kicks his legs into the air, pulling himself up with his body weight, landing softly on his feet. He keeps his fists unclenched and by his waist. 

"просто тестирование воды" he says. 

"Ты всегда бояться прыжки в воду голова первый."

She runs toward him, and they morph into a blur of movement, jumping, punching, rolling, attack and counterattack, a well choreographed dance of elegance and violence, the only sounds in the room their heavy breathing and the sound of skin connecting with skin. If one were to squint while watching, it would almost appear to be an especially brutal ballet.

He goes to sweep her legs, but she lands a kick in his stomach instead, grabs his shoulders, and flips over him with the momentum, wrapping her arms around his neck in a choke-hold. She kicks at the back of his knees, and uses the momentum of their fall to land him on his back, one hand pinning his arm against his own neck the other on a pressure point below the left side of his ribs that leaves him gasping, trying to kick her off of him. She presses her right knee to his groin, her left knee other digging into the area below his kneecap - trying to keep his left side as immobile as possible. 

She counts in her head. 

"That's ten!" She says, and releases him, adjusting so she's straddling his thighs. 

He lays flat on his back, trying to catch his breath. 

"The choke isn't fair play." 

"Nice try - we never said anything about not choking. Not my fault nobody ever thinks of it. No weapons, one pin. Point, Natasha." She might be a little smug. 

He moves his hands to cover her thighs, squeezes, lightly. She inhales, sharply. They dangle together in the moment uncertainly, and Natasha briefly feels nineteen again. 

"I  _knew_ it! You were armed! Match is forefeit." 

"I didn't use it!" 

"And I wouldn't have used mine, but I disarmed. Thems the rules -  _your_ rules, might I add. Match forefeit." 

She groans and rolls off of him. 

"Fine." 

They lay there as some distant clock ticks, catching their breath and staring at the ceiling. 

"I'm sorry," she says, "for not telling you." 

She can see him shake his head in her peripheral. 

"No. Don't be. I don't know how I would have reacted. It's ... better that I remembered on my own." 

"Why did you?" She asks. 

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know what made you suddenly remember?" She turns her head to look at him, but he's still looking up at the ceiling. He squints, slightly, and it creases his brow in a way that reminds her of who he used to be. 

"You had stitches down your cheek. When Iskra almost killed you, she cut your face in about the same place, I think. You had stitches there for a while. I think you maybe had them when you kissed me." 

Natasha reaches up and touches her cheek, her skin now only slightly raised and lightly pink in that spot. She doesn't say anything. 

* 

Things are different, now. 

It's a strange learning curve, getting to know James for who he is now. 

They spar semi-regularly, and he's the only non-space-god or super soldier who can match her drink for drink, and sometimes they chat conspiratorially about the weather in Russian to freak Tony out. 

There are times when the light hits his eyes at a certain angle, or she catches him scanning the room over and over again, that she sees a glimmer of the man she loved in that frozen hellscape. He always disappears after a moment or so, and Natasha breathes a little easier every time he does. 

He surprises her, a lot. He swears like a sailor, at times, and laughs more often than not. He's hyper-enthusiastic about baseball, and has even stronger opinions about the Dodgers than Steve. He flirts shamelessly, with anything that has a heartbeat, but blushes with his ears when somebody flirts back. He's fascinated with technology, and after a good amount of prodding, even lets Tony upgrade his arm, and gets the awful Soviet star removed.

And he loves Steve, so openly, so completely. His heart isn't even on his sleeve - he's severed it from his body and given it to Steve for safe keeping. They make her teeth ache like Зефи́р, at times, but they warm her heart. 

She loves James. Not in the way she loved Yasha all those years ago, and not in the way Steve's loved Bucky since long before she was born. She loves him for the man he is, who traversed time and the annals of history, who broke free of decades of mind control because the man he loves said his name. 

And, sure, sometimes he grins at her, small and dangerous, and she feels like that young woman who fell head over heels for the only person for miles who could kill her without breaking a sweat, but Natasha left Russia behind her a long time ago. 

She's happy where she is now. 

**Author's Note:**

> russian translations:  
> "КГБ" - KGB  
> "Яша" - Yasha, aka a Russian form of James.  
> "Красный Комната" - Red Room  
> "Госпожа" - Madame, a reference to Madame B. from the Black Widow comics, who was in charge of the Red Room.  
> "заяц" - Hare, which is a Russian term of endearment.  
> "котёнок" - Kitten, another form of endearment  
> "просто тестирование воды" - "Just testing the waters"  
> "Ты всегда бояться прыжки в воду голова первый" - "You always were afraid of diving in head first."  
> "Зефи́р" - Zefir, a russian sweet, kind of like a marshmallow.  
> disclaimer: i don't speak russian (i'm trying to learn but i'm lazy) so if any of this is wildly wrong please forgive me.  
>   
> thank you for reading! kudos n comments r appreciated but so r u!!!!


End file.
